Two meetings and a mean choock!

The mooring last night was very quiet.  Yesterday evening I walked to Braunston and took a couple of photos in an effort to record another 10,000 steps on the fitness tracker.

Dulcie Blue and Waiouru yesterday evening

Braunston Church and windmill

Braunston Turn

After watching the weather forecast before bed last night, this morning we had a boaters meeting and changed our plans.  The forecast for Thursday is for rain and we want to be at the Barley Mow on Sunday for lunch.  So we decided not to stop at Braunston and go directly to Rugby where we can wait for the rain to pass.  It was a slightly later start departing at 8.30am.  Sarah (db Dulcie Blue) was returning for her morning walk and mentioned she had purchased a Xiaomi fitness band from Amazon and found it rather useful.  Jan wanted one but I hadn’t placed an order with Amazon because we don’t have an address.  That’s when Sarah mentioned she had used the Poste Restante service <Duh!>.  Why didn’t I think of that!  This evening we placed the order.

There are a number of boats on linear moorings at Wolfhamcote and as we slowly passed them by the local CRT Enforcement Officer appeared on the towpath.  He was using binoculars to check the moored boats on the opposite side of the canal.  We exchanged greetings with him and then requested he enter Waiouru’s details into the CRT system.  He seemed slightly surprised with our request but happily obliged.  We work on the principle, the more we are sighted and recorded, the easier it will be to prove we are compliant continuous cruisers.

This old wooden boat has been on this mooring ever since we first cruised this way almost a decade ago.  It’s condition doesn’t seem to have improved during that time.

We turned left at Braunston Turn and started heading north.  There was an interesting looking boat moored on the northern outskirts of Braunston.

This is very familiar water for us and we were blissfully cruising along slowing to pass the number of moored boats.  There was one boat moored at Onley which we almost passed until I noticed the faded name on the port side.  Actually the post side looked very faded and “patchy”.  It was nb Valerie.  We knew Les and Jaq were in the Rugby area but weren’t looking for a boat that had been rubbed down ready for repainting.

A blast on the horn brought Jaq to the side hatch window slightly out of breath and with dilated pupils.  She mentioned Les didn’t have any clothes on!  I don’t know what they were up to, but then it’s been years since we were newly wed!  Anyway we moored whilst Les put on some clothes and then spent a hour or more catching up on news since our last meeting back in March.

They are obviously repainting Valerie and the starboard side already has at least one top coat.

Jan and Jaq got down to some serious girl stuff.  From the expressions on their faces the subject must have been husbands!

We retired on board Waiouru where Jaq sampled some of our sloe gin.  That’s when she started telling us about the size of the fish she had caught.

Les doesn’t look like he believed her whilst I think the sloe gin might have been a contributing factor! 

Of course the photo might be about something altogether different <it was>

We cruised on to Brownsover reaching it around 4pm and were pleasantly surprised to find a number of vacant moorings.  Jan then wandered down to Tesco to buy something for dinner. She returned with one hot and mean chicken.  Apparently Jan was walking back to Waiouru when a cyclist approached her from behind.  She heard the cyclist at the last minute and swung around to see the source of the noise.  The hot chicken in the Tesco bag cleaned up the cyclist knocking him off his bike.  Jan was very sympathetic telling the cyclist “You should have a bell!”  Suitably chastened he scurried off home where he presumably spent some time removing the blackberry thorns.  We ate the evidence.